SBI Growth

JANUARY 23, 2024

This raises the question for many Go-to-Market (GTM) leaders: how do we use AI to help sales? How do we ensure smooth adoption of AI? AI development continues at a breakneck pace, with the number of use cases increasing by the day. And what value does it bring to the business?

Engineering 177

Engineering Sales Marketing Strategy 177

Partners in Excellence

APRIL 16, 2024

We spend 100’s of millions on SKO speakers, books, and training–all focused on doing the things that drive business, sales and marketing performance. We are inspired by thousands of articles, podcasts, and videos–each offering the same answers to what we have to do to be successful. (I

Top of Funnel 103

Top of Funnel Funnel Pipeline Exercises 103

Partners in Excellence

APRIL 3, 2024

We invest enormous amounts of energy seeking to avoid dong the work. We constantly seek shortcuts, things that enable us to avoid doing the work critical to creating and sustaining performance. Our mindsets aren’t so focused on improving efficiency, rather on avoiding doing the work.

Scale 107

Scale Energy Construction Advertising 107

Partners in Excellence

APRIL 11, 2024

It’s crazy to think that we purposely design our organizations to fail. We are driven to succeed, to over achieve our goals. We constantly talk about winning. If this is true, why do we see year after year of declining performance and results? We see win rates plummeting. Why is this happening?

Scale 109

Scale Maximizer Quota Revenue 109

Partners in Excellence

APRIL 17, 2024

As much as we tire talking about the constancy of change, our jobs as sellers only exist because of change. We are trying to get our customers to change from the current products or services they are using, to our products and services. Without some sort of change, we never get a purchase order.

Lead Rank 109

Lead Rank Analysis Incentives Incentive 109

Partners in Excellence

APRIL 18, 2024

For the sparse discussion about how to fix it, the discussion focused on higher quality MQL/SQL’s and focus on better prospecting. Sure we don’t want to waste time an resources on things way outside our ICP. Why would marketing or sales do anything other than this? ” This one reported on research on win rates.

Lead Rank 107

Lead Rank Marketing Qualified Lead Sales Qualified Lead Lead Gen 107

Partners in Excellence

APRIL 9, 2024

It’s trite to say we live in worlds of growing complexity. Workloads seem to sky rocket as do demands on our time. But…… To often, I think much of the challenge we face is self inflicted. We tend to make things more complex or more difficult than they need be. Define and viciously focus on your ICP.

Ideal Customer Profile 116

Ideal Customer Profile Face-to-face CRM Opportunity 116

Smooth Sale

APRIL 16, 2024

Photo by Geralt via Pixabay Attract the Right Job or Clientele: How To Overcome Anxiety for Better Outcomes Each day presents us with new challenges, opportunities for personal growth, and empowerment. We only have one life to live. Imagine how you might feel if you did not give an issue your all to correct it and move on.

How To 116

How To Hiring Face-to-face Networking 116

Smooth Sale

APRIL 10, 2024

Photo by Geralt via Pixabay Attract the Right Job Or Clientele: How to Thrive Working in a Tough Environment Many people realize that they need to take almost any job to earn a wage. Learning new transferable skills is a confidence booster that reminds us that what we’re currently doing is not the end of our career.

How To 102

How To Benefit Motivation Lead Rank 102

Partners in Excellence

APRIL 8, 2024

And other data showing 1000-1400 touches per opportunity (Thank goodness we can solve this with AI, easily hitting 1000s of touches a day…… tongue firmly planted in cheek.) ” But, we shouldn’t be shocked or surprised. We’ve created the majority of circumstances surrounding this.

Top of Funnel 107

Top of Funnel Face-to-face Data Buying Cycle 107

Partners in Excellence

APRIL 19, 2024

Dave: We were scaling aggressively. We grew ARR tremendously past two years that I’ve been there. You know how important the “Rule of 40” is for our organizations, our “Rule of 40” number, based on 200% growth last year, is 50! Last year we hired and onboarded 80 SDRs and AEs.

Scale 110

Scale Hiring Margin Churn 110

Partners in Excellence

APRIL 1, 2024

“Value” is a critical concept in everything we do, but particularly when we are engaging customers, hoping to present a solution they will buy. Yet too often, we and our customers misunderstand the elements around “value,” as a result, we fail to leverage value to it’s greatest impact.

ROI 109

ROI Analysis Relationals Revenue 109

Partners in Excellence

MARCH 18, 2024

We have become masters at describing our “how.” ” That is, we present all the capabilities of our products and solutions, the “how” of achieving a goal or solving the problem. We provide endless content, demos, and discussions focused on the capabilities of our products.

Face-to-face 114

Face-to-face Opportunity Customer Closing 114

Partners in Excellence

APRIL 25, 2024

We seem to overlook the questions, “How do we know what ‘Top of Funnel’ we need? How do we shift that in our favor?” ” We cannot focus exclusively on Top of Funnel. Let’s do a thought experiment with this as an example.

Top of Funnel 77

Top of Funnel Funnel Sales Qualified Lead Leads 77

Partners in Excellence

MARCH 25, 2024

What are their problems, how do we help them better understand them? How do we identify the GAP between where they are and where they need to be? How do we help them close that gap, achieving their goals. So sales lines up nicely with who I am and what I like to do on a regular basis.”

Up-Sell 107

Up-Sell Sales Leadership Motivation Closing 107

Partners in Excellence

APRIL 26, 2024

We obsess about how we succeed. We develop strategies, contingency plans, prep and rehearse. We are driven to succeed for those big things. We treat the little things differently. We may skip them, thinking they aren’t important. We may skip them, thinking they aren’t important.

CRM 68

CRM 68

Partners in Excellence

APRIL 24, 2024

Whether it’s the initial purchase, or the renewal/extension, we and our customers waste too much time in p **g contests about price. We present our price, the customer’s moral obligation is to object to the price. And we go back and forth, back and forth, back and forth. It’s the pricing/cost discussion.

Discount 77

Discount Proposal Objections Positioning 77

Partners in Excellence

MARCH 25, 2024

We know buying cycles are getting longer. Or we have other excuses. But perhaps we should look inwardly. How are sellers contributing to the longer buying and sales cycles? Is there anything we can change to reduce these? And if we could, what would it mean? Then they have to do the work.

Customer 100

Customer Buying Cycle Buyer Sales Cycle 100

Partners in Excellence

APRIL 2, 2024

.” Covey writes about the importance of having a destination or a goal, Knowing what we are trying to achieve forces us to focus on the things critical to achieving the goal. Without this, we wander aimlessly, perhaps without understanding what we are trying to achieve. We orient all our activities to getting that order.

Customer 111

Customer Maximizer Closing Objections 111

The Center for Sales Strategy

APRIL 24, 2024

Over time, we've improved the tools we use to track that activity, from call sheets to spreadsheets to CRM. But if all we do is capture the data and not study the data, what's the point? For as long as sellers have been selling, managers have tracked their activity.

Sales Process 102

Sales Process Data Study Trends 102

Partners in Excellence

FEBRUARY 29, 2024

We were talking about his prospecting challenges. ” We talked about some of his strategies. He tried to connect what he learned they were doing with his prospecting efforts. How do you know if he has the problem? How do you know if he cares? Let’s call him “Stephen.”

Ideal Customer Profile 117

Ideal Customer Profile Face-to-face Trade Show Prospecting 117

Partners in Excellence

MARCH 6, 2024

Too often, there is an alignment challenge between what buyers need and what sellers do. We seem to be on diverging paths, and this creates problems for both buyers and sellers. We always seem to lead with our products and focus our conversations on those. We don’t help them by repeating what they already know.

Buyer 119

Buyer Incentives Incentive Discount 119

Partners in Excellence

MARCH 20, 2024

How do I handle objections… ?” ” There’s something, despite how mediocre the responses are, that are provoking popularity. We are attracted to new, shiny objects, despite the fact they may not be really different or innovative. And eventually, the shine wears off, we go back to what we always did.

Ideal Customer Profile 114

Ideal Customer Profile Revelation Decision Maker Face-to-face 114

Partners in Excellence

FEBRUARY 13, 2024

We’ve been taught we have to create value with our customers. Assuring we help the customers solve their problems. …… But what about the reciprocal, what value do our customers create for us? Usually, we think of that in terms of the revenue the opportunity will generate for us.

Customer 120

Customer Face-to-face Margin Revenue 120

Partners in Excellence

MARCH 14, 2024

We see a lot of uncertainty. We struggle with the idea, is there light at the end of the tunnel? How do we survive (though some real leaders are asking themselves how we thrive.) How do we survive (though some real leaders are asking themselves how we thrive.)

Face-to-face 111

Face-to-face Lead Rank Lead Scoring Churn 111

Partners in Excellence

MARCH 27, 2024

We were prepping for a very difficult customer meeting this afternoon. As we discussed the situation, he described the difficulties this customer had created in the past, he talked about how unreasonable they had been, how they weren’t meeting commitments they had made to him. We only win when our customers succeed.

Conversion 96

Conversion Call-back Positioning Meeting 96

Partners in Excellence

FEBRUARY 22, 2024

“Discovery” has been an important part of the sales process ever since I started selling (Yes, that was back when we had first chipped a wheel out of stone.) In all our training, we’ve gotten playbooks, done role plays, and learned how to conduct discovery and what questions we should be asking the customer.

B2B 101

B2B Up-Sell Customer Data 101

Partners in Excellence

MARCH 11, 2024

We know how they work and shouldn’t have an expectation of much more–at least used in these ways. My reaction to the majority responses these hacks produce is, “Nothing new, OK not great…” It’s stuff, if we work to master our profession, we should have known without needing ChatGPT.

Ideal Customer Profile 108

Ideal Customer Profile Face-to-face Engineering Industry 108

Partners in Excellence

FEBRUARY 8, 2024

Every day I think we have reached bottom with the level of stupid advice I see in my social feeds. Every day, I’m surprised that we can find new depths of stupidity. And there is are endless opinions about what we do as a result of this fundamental “truth” about how tough things are.

Buying Cycle 113

Buying Cycle Outbound Data Channels 113

Partners in Excellence

FEBRUARY 16, 2024

But in what world do we consider that acceptable? Even though it’s 2-4 times better than other approaches, why do we consider that an acceptable response rate? Why aren’t we challenging ourselves to figure out what it takes to get 5% or more? It’s like so much other data we see.

Scale 106

Scale Outbound Sales Cycle Up-Sell 106

Partners in Excellence

MARCH 9, 2024

I don’t know how many conversations I get into on “objections.” “How do I avoid or minimize objections?” ” “How do I best handle them?” ” “Should I do everything I can to avoid them?” When we encounter objections, we should listen deeply.

Objections 107

Objections Conversion Customer Strategy 107

Partners in Excellence

FEBRUARY 6, 2024

We have all sorts of technologies that give us the “answers.” Where years ago, we struggled to find answers, now they are abundant. But we have some new challenges, “Do we understand what the answers mean and can we apply them to the specific situation? What does it mean?

Data 109

Data Competition Tools Conversion 109

Partners in Excellence

NOVEMBER 6, 2023

Sometimes our success limits our thinking about what we could be achieving. We think we are doing well, but we really should be doing so much more. I’ve written, often, about how we “settle” for win rates of 15-20% and are happy achieving our growth goals.

Scale 133

Scale Hiring Call-back Revenue 133